SKG Articles: Shvat

By Mindy Ribner of Beit Miriam

Greetings and Blessings for this month of Shvat. This month marks a hidden and mystical time of
new beginning and rebirth. The renewal that occcurs in Shvat is not yet manifest on the physical
plane, but the process has begun. We may have lived through a cold and challenging winter this
year, but spring is coming!! As a metaphor, winter represents the time when it is not always easy to
see the fruit of one's labor; indeed, there may be times in our lives when it felt like winter. But be
patent, and never lose hope. Shvat is here.

The energy of Shvat is best represented by the holiday of Tu B'Shvat, which occurs on the fifteenth
of Shvat, the time of the full moon.

On the Shabbat closest to Tu B'Shvat we read the Torah portion of Beshalach (Exodus13;17). This
Torah portion recounts the crossing of the Red Sea. The Jews have left Egypt, but they now find
that the Red Sea is in front of them, making it impossible for them to go forward and Pharaoh’s army
is quickly approaching from behind. There is confusion about what to do. Should they return to
Egypt, should they fight the Egyptians, or should they drown themselves and so commit suicide?
They pray to God and God tells Moses in so many words, "Don't cry to me, Go forward into the Sea.
Raise your staff and I will split the Sea." This solution is something that is not logical, beyond what
they would have thought on their own.

When we are faced with what appears to be insurmountable challenges, the Torah portion
demonstrates to us and the energy of Shvat tells us that we should move forward with faith to carve
out a new way, even if it doesn't make sense to our rational mind. If we fight the negativity, we often
become mired in it. If we retreat, we lose and deny a part of ourselves and to some extent we will
have to deaden ourselves to accept the retreat. As the Israelites cross the sea, it parts. Moses sings
and Miriam sings and the connections with God was so strong that even the simplest person was
said to be a prophet. The crossing of the Sea continues to be a source of great joy because for that
brief time God was not hidden in nature, but revealed through it. This is the highest awareness that
we yearn for deep inside and yet it is our deepest knowing as well.

What is the difference between the song of Moses and that of Miriam, besides the length? Moses
sings a lengthy song that begins with ' I will sing unto the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously, the
horse and his rider has he thrown into the sea.... " and it goes on. And Miriam sings a short song,
like a chant, playing timbrels and dancing with the women, " Sing to the Lord for he has triumphed
gloriously, the horse and his rider has he thrown into the Sea" The words are similar but the tense is
different. Moses is talking about the time of Messiah when we will be filled with constant song, a
future time, and Miriam is speaking about the present moment. This may be indicative of the
difference between the spirituality of the feminine and that of the masculine. There are two ways
that we experience or relate to God and these reflect the ways that God wants to be known as well.
We experience God as transcendent, beyond anything we can imagine, this is what we call Ein Sof.
The transcendence of God means that God is beyond His creation. Everything is created by God
and as such He is different than His creation, and is ultimately unknowable. Our relationship with the
transcendent aspect of God is linear because we can never reach it and yet we must always striving
to go forward in life, to reach what is beyond us. As the Divine is transcendent, we need to do
mitzvot [spiritual precepts] because it is through them that we connect with Divine Will which is the
most direct and intimate expression of Divine essence. In this way through the mitzvot we can also
transcend, go beyond ourselves and connect with God. This is masculine spirituality.

Yet, God is also immanent, God is within everyone and everything and nothing can exist if not for
God being within it. This is feminine spirituality. Feminine spirituality is immediate, it is circular, non-
linear, it is the spirituality that we experience in our own body, heart and soul. It is the spirituality
that proclaims that God is happening now, there is nothing to do but simply rejoice and be who you
really are, don't do but open and allow yourself to be the vessel for the Divine Presence. Feminine
spirituality is expressed primarily through the women because her body is used as the vessel to
bring forth life.

The feminine path is not restricted to women. Some women are more inclined to connect with the
masculine aspects of God and the masculine way and some men are more inclined to connect with
the feminine aspects of God and the feminine way. Meditation is a form of feminine spirituality
because it is about experiencing God in our own body. There is nothing more immediate than that.
This is expressed by Miriam the prophetess in her song and this is also the work of my organization,
Beit Miriam which is devoted to spreading the practice of kabbalistic meditation and alternative
creative joyful spiritual gatherings that are more feminine and intimate than the traditional
synagogue worship.

In last week's Torah portion, we are told that Moses knew God as YKVK, the Transcendent,
Compassionate One and that even Avraham, Yitzchok and Yaakov did not know this Name but
rather they experienced God as El Shadai, which is the name of God associated with the sephira of
Yesod, which is located at the genitals. Yesod is the interface of the physical and the spiritual. The
spirituality of the Patriachs and Matriachs was an experience of God that was revealed through
nature, more feminine than Moses. Moses brought down a more masculine form of God revelation
than what was before, a new paradigm, because this is what is needed to make God more
accessible to large groups of people who did not know God before. Remember that two thirds of the
people who left Egypt were not Jews. God had to be made accessible to them, so there needed to
be laws and mitzvot to spread this divine revelation. This was not necessary when the Jews were a
small number and were basically immediate family. Until recent times, the masculine spirituality has
generally covered over the feminine, making it more hidden. But still we find within Judaism, aspects
of both the feminine that are very present. Shabbat is feminine, that is why we are not supposed to
work on Shabbat. As we get closer to the New Age, feminine spirituality will emerge as large as it was
before as it is said that the moon will be restored to her original size and the moon will be partners
with the sun. We see this already happening. The proper and beautiful balance and the dance
between the masculine and feminine will be restored, as it was before the sin of eating of the Tree of
Good and Evil. This brings us back to Tu B'Shvat which is the fixing of “Adam’s sin.” The Mishnah
calls Tu B'Shvat the "New Year of the Tree" and kabbalah tells us that the whole month of Shvat is
healing through eating. You will find more teachings on Shvat in my book Kabbalah Month by
Month.

Source: Beit Miriam email group

Books by Melinda Ribner can be found in our online store.
Kabbalah Month by Month also offers additional teachings, stories, and meditations about the energy of this month.
New Age Judaism offers teachings about the intersection of New Age and Kabbalah, and most relevantly about the
paradigm shift that occurred after the Temple was destroyed and now once again we are undergoing another
paradigm shift after the Holocaust.
Everday Kabbalah offers numerous meditations, and teaching for healing.